Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(51)

“It’s a guy thing. We have reactions to women in tight leather with whips. It’s sort of involuntary.” He looked around. “Where’s Michael?”

“He had to go,” I said. “He’ll meet us at the party.” No reason to tell Shane, who still couldn’t quite get over his anti-vamp upbringing, that Michael had gone to snag himself a bag of fresh plasma so he wouldn’t be snacking on mine. “Seriously, do I look okay?”

“No,” Shane said, and flopped down on the sofa. He put his heavy boots up on the coffee table, sending a paper plate with the dried remains of a chili dog close to the edge. I rescued it, gave him a dirty look, and dumped the plate in his lap. “Hey!”

“It’s your chili dog. Clean it up.”

“It’s your turn to clean.”

“The house. Not your trash, which you can walk your Leatherfaced ass into the kitchen to throw away.”

He batted his long, silky eyelashes at me. “Didn’t I tell you that you look great?” Shane said. “You do.”

“Oh, please. Chili dog. Trash. Now.”

“Seriously. Michael’s going to have to watch himself around you. And watch out for every other guy in the room, too.”

“That’s the idea,” I said. “Hey, it was this or the Naughty Nurse costume.”

Shane sent me a miserable look. “Do you have to say things like that?”

“Guy reaction?”

“You think?” He held out his plate to me, looking so pitiful that I couldn’t help but take it. “You just destroyed my ability to get off this couch.”

I had to laugh. Shane teased, but he wasn’t serious; the two of us never were, and never would be. He was thinking of someone else, and so was I.

I saw the change in his expression when we heard the sound of footsteps upstairs. He looked up and there was a kind of utter focus in him that made me smile. Boy, you have got it bad, I thought, but I was kind enough not to point it out. Yet.

Claire practically floated down the stairs. Our fourth roommate—our booky little nerd, small and fragile enough that she always looked like you could break her in half with a harsh word—looked even more ethereal than usual.

She was dressed as a fairy—a long, pale pink dress in layers of sheer stuff, glitter on her face, her hair streaked with blue and pink and green. Soft pink fairy wings. It made her look both younger than she really was, which was still a year younger than me and Shane, and yet also older.

But maybe that was just the look in her eyes that got more mature with every day she spent in Morganville, working shoulder to shoulder with the vampires.

Claire paused on the steps, looking at Shane. Her mouth fell open, ruining her ethereal fairy look. “Seriously? Leatherface? Oh God.”

“You were expecting something out of Pride and Prejudice?” Shane shrugged and held up the mask. “You don’t know me very well.”

Claire shook her head, and then caught sight of my own outfit. Her eyes widened. “Holy—”

I sighed. “Don’t say it. Shane already did.”

“That’s really—wow. Tight.”

“Catsuit,” I said. “Kind of the textbook definition of tight.”

“Well, you look . . . wow. I’d never have the guts.” Claire wafted over in her layers of pink to sit next to Shane, who gallantly moved his Leatherface mask to make room.

“You look fabulous,” he told her, and kissed her. “Oh, crap, now I’ve got glitter, right? Leatherface does not do glitter. It’s not manly.” Claire and I both rolled our eyes, right on cue. “Right. Small price to pay for the privilege of kissing such a beautiful girl—what was I thinking? Sorry.”

Shane was an idiot, but he was a good idiot, mostly. He’d never hurt Claire intentionally; I knew that. I wondered, though, if she knew that, from the look of concern that flickered across her expression. “Do you like the costume? Really?”

He stopped goofing and stared right into her eyes. “I love it,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about the costume. “You look beautiful.”

That erased some of the worry from her eyes. “It’s not too, you know, little girl or something?”

I realized that she was comparing what she was wearing with my Catwoman suit. “It’s Halloween, not ‘Hello, Slut,’” I said. “You look fantastic, CB. Hot, but not obvious. Classy.” I, on the other hand, was starting to think I looked a little too obvious, and not at all classy. “So, are we going, or are we going to waste our amazing fabulousness on this B-movie fool?”

“Hey, Leatherface is an American classic!” Shane objected. Claire and I both smacked him. Then she took the right arm; I took the left. “No fair double-teaming! Don’t make me hit you with my rubber cleaver!”

“Speaking of double-teaming, until Michael catches up to us, you’re both our dates,” I said. “Congratulations. You can be Hefner tonight if you go throw on a bathrobe and slippers.”

He stared at me, blinked, and then tossed the Leatherface mask over his shoulder as he bounced to his feet. “Awesome. Back in a minute,” he said, and dashed upstairs. Claire and I exchanged a look of perfect understanding.

“They’re just so easy.” I sighed.